I think the main use of associative memory might be to give a controller neural network an external memory bank allowing it to store and retrieve information at will.
Of course learning how to use memory is a very difficult proposition for a neural network. Traditional RAM presents impossible needle in a haystack problems of locating again what was written before. And so the tolerance for addressing errors shown by associative memory makes it seem like a good option.
https://deepmind.com/research/publications/2019/neural-turing-machines